You've really done it this time, Zbig, a really terrific idea! Minister Louis
Farrakhan called me from Phoenix this morning at 5 a.m., Phoenix time, to tell
me he saw you late last night on television, CNN's Lou Dobbs I think, with a
great idea for peace in the Middle East!! My wife got me out of the shower to
hear about it from him and as soon as I heard it, I knew it was a Zbig Idea
that might work when all seems lost. Min. Farrakhan said he was so sick at the
escalating violence in Israel and on the West Bank that he really had not
slept. He agreed with you immediately that neither the Israeli government nor
Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority could now produce a peace
settlement... and that only America could solve the problem. As I understand
it, you made the argument that if President Bush would put forward a peace
plan that would seem to be fair and balanced -- and sufficient to win the
support of the majority of Israelis and Palestinians – Ariel Sharon and
Arafat would have to focus on the Bush plan itself instead of how to restart a
peace process aimed at getting to an optimum plan. Min. Farrakhan said it is
always the simple idea that solves the most complex problem. "When people
seem to be going crazy, losing their minds, it often takes only the slightest
nudge in the right direction for them to regain their reason."

He did not say what he thought the peace plan might look like, but I told him
we have all more or less had a picture of what it would look like if the
parties could ever get over the barriers erected by the extremists on both
sides to PREVENT a final settlement. Your idea essentially says we should
forget about those barriers by leaping over them, which takes the extremists
out of the process. My own guess, based on all I read about what President
Clinton was trying to achieve in his last days in the White House, was that
the settlement would look like this: The Palestinians would get all of the
West Bank and Gaza. The existing Jewish settlements could remain if they wish,
but would be part of the Palestinian State and be Palestinian citizens. If
they did not wish to remain, they could choose a cash payment for resettlement
outside Palestine. The Palestinians would give up the "right of
return," which they have insisted upon since 1948, but which would
undermine the Jewish demographics of Israel proper. Finally, Jerusalem would
become an open city, along the lines of the Vatican, administered by
Christian, Muslim and Jewish clerics. This cohesion at the epicenter of the
Holy Land would pacify religious clerics the world over and remove whatever
incentives Al Qaeda has to recruit young terrorists.

Knowing your thinking in broad outline, Zbig, I would imagine you would accept
something like this plan at least in broad outline, with the kind of
reservations that would be needed by both sides to accommodate to it. The
devil, as you have told me, is in the details here. As soon as I heard
Minister Farrakhan explain what he had heard from you, I did contact folks I
know in the Bush administration who are of course looking for fresh ideas. I
also ran the suggested "peace plan" by Peter Signorelli, my expert
on Mideast political history, and he kicked himself, as I did, in not thinking
of your approach. His guess was that Arafat would instantly accept the Bush
proposal, with unspecified reservations that would enable him to bargain on
those devilish details. He guessed that one third of Israelis would embrace
the idea, that one third would reject it out of hand, and that the third in
the middle would be open to persuasion, needing assurance that once the ink
was dry on the settlement that the Palestinians would not be pushing for more.
The extremists on the Palestinian side, says Pete, would be unhappy, but they
would be marginalized, and Arafat he thinks would be empowered to really go
after the bad guys without losing control of the PLA center. I'd like to think
the suicide bombers would be stopped in their tracks, as the Muslim McVeighs,
as I have termed them, would not be motivated to die or kill for just one more
chip on the bargaining table.

The right wing of the Likud Party would of course yell and scream, as would
their backers here in the U.S. But Minister Farrakhan suggests the world
community would see the holdouts as preferring to cut the live baby in half
rather than share custody of it in peace. Good job, Zbig. It may not get
anywhere, but your idea strikes me as a dandy one.